Doblin: We need Churchill, not a 21st century Chamberlain

THERE IS a time for Chamberlains and a time for Churchills. President Obama interrupted his vacation on Wednesday, to speak of the barbaric execution of American journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by the terrorist group known as ISIS.

Obama's message was clear: He condemned the terrorists, extended his sympathy to Foley's family and said the United States would take action. What that action will be is unclear. In the wake of Foley's death, the administration made public an earlier unsuccessful attempt to rescue Foley and other captives. While the rescue operation was different, I had a sense of déjà vu: It reminded me of the failed rescue of U.S. hostages held in Iran during the Carter administration.

Carter has become an extraordinary emissary for peace in the many years after his presidency, but while president, he was seen as lacking the backbone and fire needed to confront the bad actors on the world stage. If you were coming of age when Carter was president, if you waited for an hour or more to buy gas for your car on a designated day, the image you had of America then was not a bright one.

The American people did not want to be engaged in another unpopular war; Vietnam was not a distant memory. Carter rode into the White House on a wave of naïve optimism that could only have existed in the years after Nixon, Watergate and President Ford's pardon of his disgraced predecessor. The hit musical "Annie," with its sunburn-inducing song "Tomorrow," was part of that moment in time.

Too much sun is unhealthy. Too much optimism based on nothing but a need for something different from the status quo is equally dangerous. Jimmy Carter wasn't "Tricky Dick," but he was no Churchill, either. And as the winds of change blew through Iran — a storm still being felt today — the United States was not ready to react to an assault on its embassy or find a quick solution to the crisis.

Ronald Reagan offered a different kind of optimism, and Americans took the bait again. Reagan's legacy is mixed, but he did restore a sense of pride in the American Dream. Several decades later, that pride has lost its luster. That is evident in the challenges faced by increasingly bold terrorists wreaking havoc across the globe and by the growing civil unrest in America.

What has been happening in Ferguson, Mo., is reflective of what is simmering in many other U.S. communities, great and small. Racial inequality. Income disparity.

A Congress full of professional legislators who are neither professional nor capable of producing legislation is a true representation of the divisiveness of our nation. America is morally, spiritually and ideologically adrift.

The spread of terrorism should be a national concern. The brutal killing of a journalist is not an isolated event. ISIS and the next serpent to rear its ugly head is looking to do more than create a nation that looks exactly like itself; it wants to humiliate and weaken the United States. Look no further than to the altered skyline of lower Manhattan and see where such ideological objectives lead.

No nation remains the dominant player in the world forever. Power shifts. But it is a hard pill to swallow if you see that shift in your lifetime. Perhaps that is what is making today's events so difficult to accept for people of my generation, who grew up watching the men and women who walked — if not literally, then spiritually — with Winston Churchill. I don't take much comfort in seeing what looks more and more like the decline of democratic values. Those values were not given to us; they were fought for with blood. There is no shortage of bloodshed today, but it is being shed for things less lofty than a shining city on a hill.

I read an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday challenging Obama to do something more than grieve and sympathize. It was a fair challenge to the leader of the free world. But even if Obama takes up the challenge, it does not mean he can win. This is not an "ice-bucket" moment, where people are asked to do something rather silly to help a good cause. This a serious moment for Obama and for us.

America may not like the idea of more conflict, but the conflict will come to us if we do not meet it head on. Sept. 11, 2001, arrived special delivery to our doorsteps.

The unchecked barbarism spreading across the Middle East may seem like something from the time of the Goths, but it's a 21st-century battle. Just as racial divisions stripped bare in Ferguson, while reminders of a Jim Crow South, are proof that unhealed old wounds bleed.

Neville Chamberlain has been branded by history as a weak leader, offering diplomatic alternatives to a Nazi regime intent on the Final Solution. The United States cannot use diplomacy with ISIS anymore than local police in Ferguson can use weapons of war against a small group of proctors. One situation calls for leadership to use force, and the other, to be strong enough to use it cautiously.

America has twice elected a man of words, rather than action; a perhaps logical reaction to having previously twice-elected a man of action, rather than one of words. Neither fit the challenges of the office.

We need a Churchill.

Alfred P. Doblin is the editorial page editor of The Record. Contact him at doblin@northjersey.com. Follow AlfredPDoblinn on Twitter.